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Anyone still rocking a Pi Zero W smart drive for TeslaCam on Sentry Mode?

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chilman408

Member
Sep 25, 2016
289
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#1
I have been using the Pi Zero W setup for months on v9, no issues... Perfect setup for me because it auto archives clips to my network.

After I got the Sentry Mode update today. My Pi0W no longer works, I get a camera icon with a grey X. The music partition still works though...

If anyone is still using this setup and works, let me know how to get it done?

I can't go back to a dumb usb drive.
 
#3
With the release of Sentry mode, I've been thinking about getting back to this. (I ran it for a while, but had reliability issues that may have been a mix of Tesla bugs and project bugs.)

At present, there seem to be three related github projects:
  • cimryan's, which is an evolution of an original reddit early attempt: cimryan/teslausb
  • LelandSindt's, which also came from a reddit inspiration, and is more focused on having a Zero W with a JuiceHat: LelandSindt/teslacam
  • milesburton's, which takes a whole different approach to power loss and corruption: milesburton/teslacam
The cimryan one appears to be the most maintained and contributed, but none of them are high frequency.
 
  • Informative
Reactions: linux-works, hoang51, squarepeg77 and 2 others
#4
lairdb said:
With the release of Sentry mode, I've been thinking about getting back to this. (I ran it for a while, but had reliability issues that may have been a mix of Tesla bugs and project bugs.)

At present, there seem to be three related github projects:
  • cimryan's, which is an evolution of an original reddit early attempt: cimryan/teslausb
  • LelandSindt's, which also came from a reddit inspiration, and is more focused on having a Zero W with a JuiceHat: LelandSindt/teslacam
  • milesburton's, which takes a whole different approach to power loss and corruption: milesburton/teslacam
The cimryan one appears to be the most maintained and contributed, but none of them are high frequency.
Click to expand...

I used a variation of cimryan's code base. Hadn't encountered any reliability issue with it.

With the Sentry Mode update, this simply stopped working. It is a gray X icon when inserted. Curiously, the music partition works fine.
 
#10
C141medic said:
Great. Thanks. Which one of the projects would you recommend with the current FW?
Click to expand...

I do not have broad or recent enough experience to make a recommendation -- but I'm thinking about picking the experiment up again, and will probably start with the cimryan.

There's also a rumor floating around that 12v (and therefore USB?) is no longer switched off, even if sentry mode is not activated. That would change things a little.
 
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Reactions: C141medic
#11
lairdb said:
There's also a rumor floating around that 12v (and therefore USB?) is no longer switched off, even if sentry mode is not activated. That would change things a little.
Click to expand...

it's not a rumor, it's a fact. i can 100% confirm that on 5.15 12v is always on, even if sentry mode is turned off. the only question i have is whether or not it will turn itself off if you don't have anything drawing power from it - but if you leave something plugged in and turned on, it absolutely will not time itself out.

whether or not this applies to the USB as well is an open question, but i would imagine it does...
 
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Reactions: chilman408 and C141medic
#16
iceraven said:
Has anyone recently had luck with cimryan/teslausb? Specifically with the OneStepSetup?

cimryan/teslausb

Getting stuck where it connects to WiFI/SSH just fine, but doesn't ever mount the Music/Cam drives in Windows and isn't recognized by the car either.
Click to expand...
Hasn’t worked for me yet. I have the usb add on board so I’m able to directly plug it in to my splitter. I installed it according to the one step setup but the car just doesn’t see it. The dashcam icon doesn’t come on. I read in some of the issues that it may be a partition issue but I haven’t looked into that yet.
 
#17
I'm to the point where if I use the headless install, it's unreadable in Windows (get usb device error), or if I run it manually get a partition error using both a 16GB sd card and a 128GB sd card:

Fixing the modules-load parameter in /boot/cmdline.txt...
Fixed cmdline.txt.
Starting to create backing files partition...
Checking existing partitions...
Modifying partition table for backing files partition...
Error: The location 128043712512 is outside of the device /dev/mmcblk0.

Problem is you need it readable in Windows to create the TeslaCam folder anyway, otherwise the car won't do anything with it either.
 
#18
iceraven said:
I'm to the point where if I use the headless install, it's unreadable in Windows (get usb device error), or if I run it manually get a partition error using both a 16GB sd card and a 128GB sd card:

Fixing the modules-load parameter in /boot/cmdline.txt...
Fixed cmdline.txt.
Starting to create backing files partition...
Checking existing partitions...
Modifying partition table for backing files partition...
Error: The location 128043712512 is outside of the device /dev/mmcblk0.

Problem is you need it readable in Windows to create the TeslaCam folder anyway, otherwise the car won't do anything with it either.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure cimryan git has merged the recent updates since 119#.

If you want to use it, you should just fork out your own and copy the commits from 119 onwards.

This is what I did. Works great.
 
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Reactions: Dre78 and C141medic
#19
iceraven said:
Error: The location 128043712512 is outside of the device /dev/mmcblk0.
Click to expand...

To get rid of that error, you need to do the following after putting the Pi image on the SD card, but before the initial boot. Otherwise, on first boot,the Pi expands the Pi partition to fill the entire SD card, so there is no room for the Music/Cam partitions.

Remove “init=/usr/lib/raspi-config/init_resize.sh” from “cmdline.txt”.
 
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Reactions: C141medic
#20
iceraven said:
Getting stuck where it connects to WiFI/SSH just fine, but doesn't ever mount the Music/Cam drives in Windows and isn't recognized by the car either.
Click to expand...

I had the same issue and did the following to get it recognizable as a USB drive in Windows (no car yet to test).

sudo nano /boot/config.txt
Add the line:
dtoverlay=dwc2

sudo nano /etc/modules
Add the line:
dwc2

And connect the computer to the USB data port on the Pi (not the USB power port), in case that wasn't obvious.

I added a saved.txt file to the Pi USB drive on Windows, and after a reboot of the Pi, it moved the file to my file share.
 
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